Customer reviews

Most helpful customer reviews on Amazon.com

Amazon.com:
4.3 out of 5 stars
628 reviews

5 people found this helpful.

3.0 out of 5 starsNice When it Works

ByPhillip G. Boydon 19 May 2013 - Published on Amazon.com

Verified Purchase

I bought the model without the preloaded topo and without the camera feature. I do like the GPS but found it to be a reall battery hog. I used AA batteries and found that I could barely get through a day of hiking without seeing the unit go into a standby mode displaying a low battery alert message. It's not a huge deal to carry extra batteries, but I would really like to have a unit that didn't need me to be swapping out extra batteries at the end of every day. In Garmin's defense, they do advise you to use lithium ion batteries, but even then, I don't know that you're going to get a lot of use from this out in the wild. There may be some settings I was missing that save the battery (I know the manual is downloadable, but it wouldn't hurt to have a printed manual with the unit other than the quick start guide). Keeping the display brightness very low would probably help, but it isn't a super bright display as it is.

For the trip home I changed the mode to travel by car and did not even get a full two hours of operating time out of it before it went dead. The car kit to power the unit while you drive would definitely be something to consider if you want to use it while driving. The car kit doesn't charge the unit though, so keep that in mind and remember that you are still going to need to replace the batteries pretty religiously.

I'm glad I didn't buy the Garmin carrying strap with Carabiner, because it comes with one in the box. I bought the extra 24K Topo Maps and had a little trouble getting the mini-SD card to seat properly. It turns out that you have to snap the little metal holder into place and not just set the SD card under the batteries and close the lid. Garmin tech support was very good at responding to my email and walking me through the process of getting the maps loaded.

Unfortunately I just don't see this as a purchase I want to keep because of the limitations I had with battery life. Amazon's return policy is perfect for me with this product and even the Topo Maps were accepted as a return (I was a little worried that I would be out the money for the maps).

There are more expensive units out there, and possibly better ones, but for the money, this is the best you're going to get for your investment. Paperless geocaching, easy to import pocket queries (you have to have a premium acct with Groundspeak, of course), and easy to upload your activity to your account.I have found the accuracy (assuming good satellite availability) to be within 3 ft. That's the gold standard for geocaching, if you don't know. I've tested it at geological markers several times.It has way more features than I regularly use, but the ones I use I would never give up. Touch screen, customizable icon arrangement, adjustable backlighting, you can load map overlays (I put the US counties on it for when I was collecting Texas counties), and you can add a small SD card to expand memory - but I need to explain that.The resident memory allows the device to hold way more than 5,000 caches - but the file system, not available memory, will stop you there. Actually, it won't stop you so much as sacrificing some reliability; by that I mean that #5,001 may or may not show up! It will hold so many pocket queries that you can more or less think of it as infinite, but the total number of unique caches needs to be held to 5,000. Duplicate caches between PQs will simply be displayed once, the dups ignored, which is good. So why use the SD chip? So you can add maps if you want them. If you're happy with the default map, you don't need the extra memory.When you log a cache, it marks it found, and keeps a small text file with your entries. I always upload that file, then rename it as *.bak just in case, and it creates a new file next time I turn it on and log a cache.I find the compass view best by far when caching, but you have choices.It's also a good idea to recalibrate whenever you buy a new kind of battery, or if you wake it up in a place that's a long way from where you last used it. That will give you better compass accuracy, because different batteries will have different magnetic properties, and it will want to look for the satellites it remembers. Menu navigating for calibration is via "setup," and not as easy as I wish it were. And the final step in the calibration often fails.You should also note that, like other GPSers, the compass will be way off if you're sitting in your car, motionless. This is due to the metal in your car. But if your car is moving, the Garmin will use the motion to calculate direction, only switching to magnetic when you stop.I absolutely recommend the Garmin Oregon 450 if you plan to use it for geocaching.Any GPS will drain batteries. You can make yours last longer if you turn the backlighting off for daytime use.The unit is rugged, reasonably waterproof (don't drop it in the lake, but you can use it in the rain), and the perfect upgrade if you've been depending on your smart phone for your hobby. Ask around at your next GC meeting, and you'll see that this is a popular unit among the serious geocaching community.